In the short story Everyday Use, a theme is the conflict between preserving your heritage as it was in the past and continuing on growing and changing your heritage. In the story, a mother and her daughter Maggie get visited by the other daughter Dee, who went off to get an education. Dee wants to keep some old quilts as heirlooms and hang them up to preserve them, while the mother wanted to leave them to Maggie, who would use them like regular quilts until they get worn out, and then make more.
Dee wanted to preserve the quilts, because they were a part of their heritage. She stops treating the quilts as just quilts, instead treating them as some sort of sacred artifact. She even changed her name to Wangero to get closer to her African heritage, even though her original name was a name passed through her family and can also be considered part of her heritage. In Dee’s efforts to get closer to her heritage, she abandoned her family’s unique heritage.
The mother wanted to just treat the quilts as quilts and if they get ruined, just make another. she still considered the as part of her heritage, but she thinks the best course of action would be to just use the quilts as they were supposed to be used. If they were to be ruined, then they had served their purpose, and new quilts can be made, which will also part of her family heritage.
One of the messages in the story is the differences between keeping and preserving old pieces of heritage and adding onto that heritage. The first option turns the heritage into a more abstract idea, while the latter keeps it alive and potentially alters it.